Saturday, November 20, 2010

State Must Cancel 'Take Charge', End Bogus Birth Control Boondoggle for Planned Parenthood

Readers of this blog know that we were the first to call attention to a little known state Medicaid program called Take Charge, and have worked hard to get it terminated.

So we were thrilled to discover, originally from Planned Parenthood as it turns out, that the the 10-year-old program is on the chopping block. With record budget shortfalls, Olympia is being forced against their will to find programs to cut. And the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) has indicated that all optional Medicaid programs are fair game.

Take Charge is a federally approved exception to standard Medicaid rules exclusive to Washington State. It means about 50,000 low-income women who normally are above the income cutoff for Medicaid can get free birth control for a year courtesy of taxpayers. (When liberals says 'get the government out of my sex life', they only mean when the government is encouraging the formation of new life, it turns out.)
The program started in 2000, under the Bush Administration, and has turned into a massive financial boondoggle for Planned Parenthood in this state. They admit that half of their clients are Take Charge enrollees. The massive expansion of PP in Washington State over the last decade has largely been bankrolled through this program.

Now Planned Parenthood is lobbying hard to have this program continued. Their argument is not that their CEO, Christine Charbonneau, will have to live on less than a quarter million dollars a year salary. No, their argument, is that cutting the program "will generate another $50 million annually in new state costs because of new unintended pregnancies."

This of course is absolute bunk.

For that figure to be accurate, about a quarter of the 50,000 Take Charge clients would have to end up pregnant every year. We know that about half of unplanned pregnancies end up in abortion, and about half end up in live babies (not including natural miscarriages). This would mean about 5,600 new abortions (at about $600 a piece), and about 5,600 new births on Medicaid (at about $8,000 each).

The state's own numbers on Medicaid abortions puts the figure just shy of 13,000. PP wants us to believe the number will jump 40%! The state also says that it pays for over 42,000 births a year. PP wants us to believe this figure would 13% in a single year. This would be unheard of.

They might have a leg to stand on if the historical figures showed a drop of that magnitude when the program came into effect. But if you look at the state's numbers on Medicaid-paid births and abortions before and after 2000, when the program began, you see absolutely no inflection in the trendline whatsoever. Indeed, Medicaid-paid births went from 32,000 before the program began to the 42,000+ figure of today.

Similarly, the number of Medicaid-paid abortions was relatively steady in between 10k and 11k in the late 90s, and then started to climb as the program got underway until it reached a high of 14,165 in 2004.

Consistent with this is the fact that Planned Parenthood of Western Washington saw its number of abortions, which theoretically should have been declining, skyrocket during this time. We don't know how many babies they were killing until 2004, but they jumped 50% from about 6,000 at that time to over 9,000 in 2007.

The fact is, contrary to one of the most sacred tenets of sexual liberalism, putting thousands of low-income women with brown skin on birth control doesn't make abortion go away.

So Washington State Planned Parenthood's propaganda to save their best single source of revenue through the last decade can be seen to be, like just about everything else they say, a pile of junk. We call on the Gregoire Administration to do what the Bush Administration would not. Kill this program now.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Extremely well-elucidated piece sir. Thank you for your efforts in truly 'shining a light on abortion in Washington'. It really is an industry complete with lobbyists, sugar daddy politicians, targeted marketing to increase abortion 'market share', . . . Surely the true facts presented here will open the eyes of some well-meaning but previously ill-informed state legislators and perhaps even the governor as they run a fine-toothed comb through the next budget.

This program only feeds into the business plan of the Planned Parenthood abortion outfit. More like 'Planned Abortion In The Neighborhood' than 'planned parenthood'

As a promising yet broke pre-med student, I cannot afford birth-control without this program. Is it right to cancel a program that for many does prevent pregnancy? Having a child now would make it almost impossible for me to finish school. Planned parenthood is not the only providers of the take charge program. By the way your number for the failure rate of birth control is inaccurate and simplistic. Failure rates for the pill when used perfectly are less than one percent and 7 percent if used imperfectly. The rates for other forms of birth control such as the ring shot or implants are very low. Did you do a population analysis with your supposed increase in unplanned pregnancies? Is it not better to at least attempt to prevent unplanned pregnancies than just let them happen? If your focus is truly on ending abortion then preventing the pregnancies in the first place is the best way to start.

Dear Supporter --I can't find anything in your post to support continuation of this program.Contraceptives cure no disease. They are lifestyle drugs. It seems to me that medical marijuana might find more justification for government funding than contraceptives. Why don't you abstain from sex until you are married? You are worth it. You should be concetrating on your studies and becoming a doctor who will bring real health care to women that respects their bodies and doesn't treat fertility as a disease.The fact is, roughyly 50% of the women/girls presenting themsleves for an abortion report that they were using contraceptives at the time they got pregnant. That isn't our stat, that's from the Guttmacher institute.As a medical student you should also be well informed about all the harmful side-effects of contraceptives, including cancer.Did you hear about the April 2009 study by Jessica Dolle et al. of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center examining the relationship between oral contraceptives (OCs) and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) in women under age 45? It contained an admission from U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) researcher Louise Brinton and her colleagues (including Janet Daling) that abortion raises breast cancer risk by 40%. Please take a second look at your contraceptive use and read that study.Let us know what you think. We hope you'll choose life and love over the false promises of the contraceptive lifestyle which only leads to abortion and heartache.

...I would now like to say a special word to women who have had an abortion...[many people are] aware of the many factors which may have influenced your decision, and [do] not doubt that in many cases it was a painful and even shattering decision. The wound in your heart may not yet have healed. Certainly what happened was and remains terribly wrong. But do not give in to discouragement and do not lose hope. Try rather to understand what happened and face it honestly. If you have not already done so, give yourselves over with humility and trust to repentance. The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace ... You will come to understand that nothing is definitively lost and you will also be able to ask forgiveness from your child...With the friendly and expert help and advice of other people, and as a result of your own painful experience, you can be among the most eloquent defenders of everyone's right to life. Through your commitment to life, whether by accepting the birth of other children or by welcoming and caring for those most in need of someone to be close to them, you will become promoters of a new way of looking at human life. -- Pope John Paul II